illuminati hotties announce new LP, playing shows (watch video for new single "Pool Hopping")
Back in April, illuminati hotties shared a new single, “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA,” the first release on their new label, Snack Shack Tracks, an imprint of Hopeless Records. They’ve now announced a new album, Let Me Do One More, due out on October 1. “The songs tell a story of my gremlin-ass running around LA, sneaking into pools at night, messing up and starting over, begging for attention for one second longer, and asking the audience to let me do one more,” bandleader Sarah Tudzin says. Hanif Abdurraqib wrote a piece about the album, which you can find below, along with the cover art and tracklisting.
Speaking of sneaking into pools at night, that’s what their newest single, “Pool Hopping,” a bright, energetic romp that screams summer, is about. “It’s POOL HOPPING SUMMER,” Tudzin says. “I’m so stoked to have grilled up a splashy new song & music video (directed by Katie Neuhof) to soundtrack your wettest & wildest parties to date. This track is for when it’s hot, you’re crushing on someone new, and your adventure senses are tingling. Come on in, the water’s fine!!!” Watch the video below.
illuminati hotties have also announced a couple of tour dates supporting Death Cab for Cutie on their September run, as well as a headlining date in Los Angeles, on October 2 at Zebulon. Tickets go on sale Friday, June 11 at 10 AM, and you can see all dates below.
illuminati hotties – Let Me Do One More tracklist
1. Pool Hopping
2. MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA
3. Knead
4. Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism
5. u v v p (feat Buck Meek)
6. Protector
7. Joni: LA’s No 1 Health Goth
8. Kickflip
9. Toasting (feat Alex Menne)
10. The Sway
11. Cheap Shoes
12. Growth
ILLUMINATI HOTTIES: 2021 TOUR
09/15/21 – Las Vegas, NV – The Chelsea at the Cosmopolitan *
09/17/21 – Napa, CA – Oxbow RiverStage *
10/02/21 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
* supporting/ Death Cab For Cutie
Hanif Abdurraqib on Let Me Do One More:
I have this pal who insists that all writers, all makers, all people who put anything in the world outside of themselves – we should all come to terms with the fact that nothing we do is finished. An acceptance, this pal says, that will bring so many of us closer to contentment with the fact that we sometimes age beyond whatever it is we create, and there’s no real way to adjust for that except to honor our emotional evolution and the work that allowed us to crawl our way towards it.
I’m not always invested in this idea as I should be, admittedly, but there’s something I love about knowing that the work can be revised as I revise the self, or that old work can be tended to in the search for new work.
But before I get into all of that, the high-reaching impact of aging beyond our creations and aching for corrections before they slip through their fingers, let me say that most importantly, I love any Illuminati Hotties album because Sarah Tudzin is one of my favorite types of writers: A writer who takes their craft seriously, but refuses to take themselves seriously. It is an achievement for album to hold a song as fluorescently tender as “Threatening Each Other,” teeming with an ever-growing longing and also a song as raucous and thrilling as “Pool Hopping,” which feels and sounds like the unfurling of a mischievous summer’s night with nothing to do other than cause some trouble with yourself and a small and eager crew.
To retreat to my initial point, though, what makes this album even more of an achievement is how the album arrived in the world and what it carries with it. For those who fell in love with Free I.H., as I did, you perhaps were drawn to it, as I was, by the miracle of an album that sounded unrestricted and autonomous. Not messy in an unrefined way, but messy in a way that was held up by risk-taking, and discovery.
To have that album and all of its brilliance exist by way of exit from a sticky and untenable label situation led Tudzin back here, to these songs that were, largely, written and put together before Free I.H. was made. But this is how the process works when it comes to the creation of almost anything: the work makes a path to the work. It’s unromantic, probably. But with any luck, every time any of us sits down to create something, we walk out of it a little better or a little more skilled or a little more tender than we were before. And, also with any luck, we get to take all of that back into the world.
All of this brings me to the somewhat joyful act of revision as a tool not to correct your past self, but to revel in what you’ve created, what you are capable and might not be capable of again, with the reality that nothing is promised. It might be the darkness of the year – leaving me with no choice but to seek optimism around every corner – but Let Me Do One More is an album that sounds, to me, as hopeful and thrilling as newly discovered freedom. The lock you’ve been picking at for hours, finally falling to the floor, and the door opening to the weather you love most. Even the songs that sound winding and beautifully anguished, like “Kickflip,” feel like a release. To say nothing of the slow-moving cocoon-like nature of “Growth,” which encases me in something that feels like warmth. I love an album like this one: an album that doesn’t spare any complexity but still manages to be life-giving, and oh, how it is needed now.
Before even pressing play on the music, I suggest sinking into the title. If you, like me, are a sucker for titles and the joys of what they can hold. You might be like me, in that you maybe know a pal or love a pal who knows how to pull a night past whatever its logical ending point may be. The person who, when you are exhausted and dragging at 2am (though I am being generous to my present self here, it is more like midnight these days) turns up the radio and encourages a singalong, or finds a bit of mischief to collapse into right at the last minute. I’m thinking of those people now, the people I love, aching for a little more time together, a little more moonlight and a little more of the possibility it brings.
The outdoors are treacherous and in many ways untenable at the time of writing this, though I am trying for optimism. I love this album beyond its title, but I love its title for what it awakened in me. The memory of a different time, when touch was not at a premium. A time that might be slightly obsolete by the season you spin this record in. A time when I’d hear Let Me Do One More as a small and affectionate ode: let’s stay together a while. Let’s share something else. I’m not done yet.
